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Wendell  Phillips, 


BY 


THOMAS   WENTWORTH    HIGGINSON, 


J 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS. 

[PROM  THE   NEW- YORK  NATION,  BY  THOMAS   WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON.] 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS,  son  of  John  and  Sarah 
"  (Walley)  Phillips,  was  born  Nov.  29,  1811.  Like 
so  many  eminent  men  in  New  England,  he  traced  his 
line  of  descent  to  a  Puritan  clergyman;  in  this  case, 
the  Rev.  George  Phillips,  first  minister  of  Watertown, 
Mass.  From  that  ancestor  was  descended,  in  the  fifth 
generation,  John  Phillips,  first  mayor  of  Boston,  elected 
in  1822,  as  a  sort  of  compromise  candidate  between 
Harrison  Gray  Otis  and  Josiah  Quincy,  who  equally 
divided  public  favor.  John  Phillips  is  credited  by  tra- 
dition with  "a  pliable  disposition,"  which  he  clearly 
did  not  transmit  to  his  son.  He  was  a  graduate  of 
Harvard  College  in  1788,  held  various  public  offices, 
and  was  for  many  years  "  Town  Advocate  and  Public 
Prosecutor,"  a  function  which  certainly  became,  in  a 
less  official  sense,  hereditary  in  the  family.  He  was  a 
man  of  wealth  and  reputation  ;  and  he  built  for  himself 
a  large  mansion,  which  is  conspicuous  in  the  early  en- 
gravings of  Boston,  and  is  still  standing  at  the  lower 
corner  of  Beacon  and  Walnut  Streets.  There  Wendell 
Phillips  was  born.  He  was  placed  by  birth  in  the  most 
favored  worldly  position ;  the  whole  Phillips  family 
being  rich  and  influential,  at  a  time,  when  social  demar- 


c\  m  \*if\fin 


yj  WENDELL    PHILLIPS. 

cations  were  more  distinct  than  now.  He  was,  how- 
ever, brought  up  wisely,  since  John  Phillips  made  this 
rule  for  his  children:  "Ask  no  man  to  do  for  you  any 
thing  that  you  are  not  able  and  willing  to  do  for  your- 
self." Accordingly  his  son  'claimed,  in  later  life,  that 
there  was  hardly  any  kind  of  ordinary  trade  or  manual 
labor  used  in  New  England  at  which  he  had  not  done 
many  a  day's  work.  He  attended  the  Boston  Latin 
School,  entered  Harvard  College  before  he  was  sixteen, 
and  was  graduated  (in  1831)  before  he  was  twenty,  in 
the  same  class  with  Motley  the  historian.  Both  of 
them  had  personal  beauty,  elegance,  and  social  posi- 
tion ;  and  Mr.  Phillips  always  readily  testified  that  both 
of  them  had  certain  narrow  prejudices,  which  he  out- 
grew very  soon,  and  Motley  in  the  end. 

It  is  rare  for  any  striking  career  to  have  a  dramatic 
beginning ;  but  it  may  be  truly  said  of  Wendell  Phil- 
lips, that  his  first  recorded  speech  established  his  repu- 
tation as  an  orator,  and  determined  the  whole  course  of 
his  life.  Being  graduated  at  the  Cambridge  Law 
School  in  1834,  he  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  the  same 
year.  In  1835  he  witnessed  the  mobbing  of  Garrison ; 
in  1836  joined  the  American  Anti-slavery  Society.  In 
1837  occurred  the  great  excitement  which  raged  in  Con- 
gress around  John  Quincy  Adams  when  he  stood  for 
the  right  of  petition ;  and  in  November  of  that  year 
Elijah  P.  Lovejoy  was  murdered  at  Alton,  111.,  while 
defending  his  press  from  a  pro-slavery  mob.  The  Rev. 
Dr.  Channing  and  others  asked  the  use  of  Faneuil 
Hall  for  a  meeting  to  express  their  indignation :  the 
city  authorities  refused  it ;  Dr.  Channing  then  wrote  an 
appeal  to  the  citizens  of  Boston,  and  the  authorities 
yielded  to  the  demand.  At  the  Faneuil-hall  meeting 
Jonathan  Phillips,  a  wealthy  citizen  and  a  second 
cousin  of  Wendell  Phillips,  presided;   Dr.  Channing 


WENDELL    PHILLIPS.  vii 

spoke,  and  then  two  young  lawyers,  Hallett  and  Hil- 
lard.  James  Trecothick  Austin,  Attorney-General  of 
the  State,  then  addressed  the  audience  from  the  gal- 
lery;  and  his  speech  soon  proved  the  meeting  to  be 
divided  on  the  main  question,  with  a  bias  toward  the 
wrong  side.  He  said  that  Lovejoy  died  as  the  fool 
dieth,  and  compared  his  murderers  to  the  men  who 
threw  the  tea  into  Boston  Harbor.  The  audience 
broke  into  applause,  and  seemed  ready  to  go  with 
Austin  ;  when  Wendell  Phillips  came  on  the  platform, 
amid  opposition  that  scarcely  allowed  him  to  be  heard. 
Almost  at  his  first  words,  lie  took  the  meeting  in  his 
hands,  and  brought  it  back  to  its  real  object.  "  When 
I  heard,"  he  said,  "  the  gentleman  lay  down  principles 
which  placed  the  murderers  of  Alton  side  by  side  with 
Otis  and  Hancock,  with  Quincy  and  Adams,  I  thought 
these  pictured  lips  [pointing  to  their  portraits]  would 
have  broken  into  voice  to  rebuke  the  recreant  Amer- 
ican, the  slanderer  of  the  dead."  From  that  moment 
the  tide  was  turned,  the  audience  carried,  the  oratorical 
fame  of  Wendell  Phillips  secured,  and  his  future  careei 
determined.  From  this  time  forward,  and  while  slavery 
remained,  he  was  first  and  chiefly  an  abolitionist;  all 
other  reforms  were  subordinate  to  this,  and  this  was  his 
life.  To  this  he  sacrificed  his  social  position,  his  early 
friendships,  his  professional  career.  Possessing  a  suffi- 
cient independent  income,  he  did  not  incur  the  added 
discomfort  of  poverty:  but,  being  rich,  he  made  him- 
self, as  it  were,  poor  through  life  ;  reduced  his  personal 
wants  to  the  lowest  terms,  earned  all  the  money  he 
could  by  lecturing,  and  gave  away  all  that  he  could 
spare. 

He  was  fortunate  in  wedding  a  wife  in  perfect  sym- 
pathy with  him,  — Miss  Ann  T.  Greene,  — and,  indeed, 
he  always  said  that  her  influence  first  made  him  an  abo- 


/ 


yiii  WENDELL   PHILLIPS. 

litionist.  A  life-long  invalid,  rarely  leaving  her  room, 
she  had  yet  such  indomitable  courage,  such  keenness  of 
wit,  such  insight  into  character,  that  she  really  divided 
with  him  the  labors  of  his  career.  It  is  impossible  for 
those  who  knew  them  both  to  think  of  him  without  her; 
it  is  sad  to  think  of  her  without  him.  They  lived  on 
Essex  Street,  in  a  region  almost  deserted  by  residences 
and  given  over  to  shops;  the  house  was  plain  and  bare, 
without  and  within  ;  they  had  no  children ;  and,  except 
during  the  brief  period  when  their  adopted  daughter 
was  with  them,  the  home  seemed  almost  homeless  out- 
side of  the  walls  of  Mrs.  Phillips's  apartment.  There 
indeed  —  for  her  husband  and  her  few  intimates  —  peace 
and  courage  ruled,  with  joy  and  hilarity  not  seldom 
added.  But  for  many  years  Mr.  Phillips  was  absent  a 
great  deal  from  Boston,  on  his  lecture  tours,  though 
these  rarely  extended  far  westward,  or  over  very  long 
routes.  Both  he  and  his  wife  regarded  these  lectures 
as  an  important  mission,;  for,  even  if  he  only  spoke  on 
"  The  Lost  Arts  "  or  "  Street  Life  in  Europe,"  it  gave 
him  a  personal  hold  upon  each  community  he  visited, 
and  the  next  time,  perhaps,  an  anti-slavery  lecture 
would  be  demanded,  or  one  on  temperance  or  woman's 
rights.  He  always  claimed  this  sort  of  preliminary  in- 
fluence, in  particular,  for  his  lecture  on  Daniel  O'Con- 
nell,  which  secured  for  him  a  great  following  among  our 
Irish  fellow-citizens,  at  a  time  when  they  were  bitterly 
arrayed  against  the  anti-slavery  movement. 

Unlike  his  coadjutor  Edmund  Quincy,  Wendell  Phil- 
lips disavowed  being  a  non-resistant.  That  scruple,  as 
well  as  the  alleged  pro-slavery  character  of  the  Consti- 
tution, precluded  most  of  the  Garrisonian  abolitionists 
from  voting,  or  holding  office;  but  Phillips  was  checked 
by  his  anti-slavery  convictions  alone.  This  fact  made 
him,  like  Theodore  Parker,  a  connecting  link  between 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS.  IX 

the  non-resistants  and  the  younger  school  of  abolition- 
ists who  believed  in  physical  opposition  to  the  local 
encroachments,  at  least,  of  the  slave-power.  They 
formed  various  loosely-knit  associations  for  this  pur- 
pose, of  which  he  was  not  a  member ;  but  he  was  ready 
with  sympathy  and  money.  In  one  of  their  efforts,  the 
Burns  rescue,  he  always  regretted  the  mishap,  which, 
for  want  of  due  explanation,  threw  him  on  the  side  of 
caution,  where  he  did  not  belong.  At  the  Faneuil-Hall 
meeting,  which  it  was  proposed  to  transfer  bodily  to 
Court  Square,  Theodore  Parker  was  notified  of  the 
project,  but  misunderstood  the  signal;  Wendell  Phil- 
lips was  never  even  notified,  for  want  of  time,  and 
was  very  unjustly  blamed  afterwards.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  he  was,  in  his  very  fibre,  a  man  of  action ;  but 
he  never  discouraged  those  who  were  such,  nor  had  he 
the  slightest  objection  to  violating  law  where  human 
freedom  was  at  stake.  A  man  of  personal  courage,  he 
eminently  was.  In  the  intense  and  temporary  revival  fy 
of  mob  feeling  in  Boston,  in  the  autumn  and  winter  of 
1860,  when  a  John  Brown  meeting  was  broken  up  by 
the  same  class  of  "gentlemen  of  property  and  stand- 
ing "  who  had  mobbed  Garrison,  Wendell  Phillijps  was 
the  object  of  special  hostility.  He  was  then  speaking 
every  Sunday  at  the  Music  Hall,  to  Theodore  Parker's 
congregation,  and  was  each  Sunday  followed  home  by 
a  mob,  while  personally  defended  by  a  self-appointed 
bod3T-guard.  On  one  occasion  the  demonstrations  were 
so  threatening  that  he  was  with  difficulty  persuaded  to 
leave  the  hall  by  a  side  entrance ;  and  was  driven  to  his 
home,  with  a  fast  horse,  by  the  same  Dr.  David  Thayer 
who  watched  his  dying  bed.  For  several  nights  his 
house  was  guarded  by  a  small  body-guard  of  friends 
within,  and  by  the  police  without.  During  all  this 
time,  there  was  something  peculiarly  striking  and  char- 


X  WENDELL   PHILLIPS. 

acteristic  in  his  demeanor.  There  was  absolutely  noth- 
ing of  bull-dog  combativeness ;  but  a  careless,  buoyant, 
almost  patrician  air,  as  if  nothing  in  the  way  of  mob- 
violence  were  worth  considering,  and  all  threats  of 
opponents  were  simply  beneath  contempt.  He  seemed 
like  some  English  Jacobite  nobleman  on  the  scaffold, 
carelessly  taking  snuff,  and  kissing  his  hand  to  the 
crowd,  before  laying  his  head  upon  the  block.*. 

No  other  person  than  Garrison  could  bfc  said  to  do 
much  in  the  way  of  guiding  the  "  Garrisonian "  anti- 
slavery  movement;  and  Wendell  Phillips  was  thor- 
oughly and  absolutely  loyal  to  his  great  chief,  while 
slavery  existed.  In  the  details  of  the  agitation,  per- 
haps the  leading  organizers  were  two  remarkable 
women,  Maria  Weston  Chapman  and  Abby  Kelley 
Foster.  The  function  of  Wendell  Phillips  was  to  sup- 
ply the  eloquence,  but  he  was  not  wanting  either  in 
grasp  of  principles  or  interest  in  details.  He  thor- 
oughly accepted  the  non-voting  theory,  and  was  ready 
not  only  to  speak  at  any  time,  but  to  write,  —  which 
he  found  far  harder,  —  in  opposition  to  those  abolition- 
ists, like  Lysander  Spooner,  who  were  always  trying  to 
prove  the  United-States  Constitution  an  anti-slavery 
instrument.  Mr.  Phillips's  "The  Constitution  a  Pro- 
slavery  Compact M  (1844),  though  almost  wholly  a  com- 
pilation from  the  Madison  papers,  was  for  many  years 
a  storehouse  of  argument  for  the  disunion  abolitionists ; 
and  it  went  through  a  series  of  editions. 

In  later  life  he  often  wrote  letters  to  the  newspapers, 
in  which  he  did  not  always  appear  to  advantage.  But 
he  did  very  little  writing,  on  the  whole :  it  always  came 
hard  to  him,  and  he  had,  indeed,  a  theory  that  the  same 
person  could  never  succeed  both  in  speaking  and  writ- 
ing, because  they  required  such  different  habits  of  mind. 
Even  as  to  reports. of  his  speeches,  he  was  quite  indif- 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS.  XI 

ferent ;  and  it  was  rather  hard  to  persuade  him  to  inter- 
est himself  in  the  volume  of  his  "  Speeches,  Lectures, 
and  Essays,"  which  was  prepared  by  James  Redpath 
in  18b'3.  That  editor  was  a  good  deal  censured  at  the 
time  for  retaining  in  these  speeches  the  expressions  of 
applause  or  disapprobation  which  had  appeared  in  the 
original  newspaper  reports,  and  which  the  orator  had 
erased.  It  is,  however,  fortunate  that  Mr.  Redpath 
did  this:  it  not  only  increases  their  value  as  memo- 
rials of  the  time,  but  it  brings  out  that  close  contact 
and  intercommunion  with  his  audience  which  formed 
an  inseparable  part  of  the  oratory  of  Wendell  Phillips. 
The  latter  also  published  "  The  Constitution  a  Pro- 
slavery  Compact"  (1844),  "Can  Abolitionists  vote  or 
take  Office?"  (1845),  "Review  of  Spooner's  Constitu- 
tionality of  Slavery"  (1847),  and  other  similar  pam- 
phlets. He  moreover  showed  real  literary  power  and  an 
exquisite  felicity  in  the  delineation  of  character,  through 
his  memorial  tributes  to  some  of  his  friends;  as,  for  in- 
stance, the  philanthropist  Mrs.  Eliza  Garnaut  of  Boston, 
whose  only  daughter  (now  Mrs.  G.  W.  Smalley  of  Lon- 
don) he  afterward  adopted. 

The  keynote  to  the  oratory  of  Wendell  Phillips  lay 
in  this:  that  it  was  essentially  conversational,  —  the 
conversational  raised  to  its  highest  power.  Perhaps  no 
orator  ever  spoke  with  so  little  apparent  effort,  or  began 
so  entirely  on  the  plane  of  his  average  hearers.  It  was 
as  if  he  simply  repeated,  in  a  little  louder  tone,  what 
he  had  just  been  saying  to  some  familiar  friend  at  his 
elbow.  The  effect  was  absolutely  disarming.  Those  ac- 
customed to  spread-eagle  eloquence  felt  perhaps  a  slight 
sense  of  disappointment.  Could  this  quiet,  easy,  effort- 
less man  be  Wendell  Phillips?  But  he  held  them  by 
his  very  quietness :  it  did  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to 
him,  to  doubt  his  power  to  hold  them.    The  poise  of  his 


Xll  WENDELL  PHILLIPS. 

manly  figure,  the  easy  grace  of  his  attitude,  the  thrill- 
ing modulation  of  his  perfectly  trained  voice,  the  dig- 
nity of  his  gesture,  the  keen  penetration  of  his  eye,  all 
aided  to  keep  his  hearers  in  hand.  The  colloquialism 
was  never  relaxed,  but  it  was  familiarity  without  loss  of 
keeping.  When  he  said  "isn't"  and  "wasn't," — or 
even,  like  an  Englishman,  dropped  his  g's,  and  said 
"bein"'  and  "doin\" — it  did  not  seem  inelegant?  he 
might  almost  have  been  ungrammatical,  and  it  would 
not  have  impaired  the  fine  air  of  the  man.  Then,  as  the 
argument  went  on,  the  voice  grew  deeper,  the  action 
more  animated,  and  the  sentences  would  come  in  a  long, 
sonorous  swell,  still  easy  and  graceful,  but  powerful  as 
the  soft  stretching  of  a  tiger's  paw.  He^could  be  terse 
as  Carlyle,  or  his  periods  could  be  as  prolonged  and 
cumulative  as  those  of  Choate  or  Evarts:  no  matter; 
they  carried,  in  either  case,  the  same  charm.  He  was 
surpassed  by  Garrison  in  grave  moral  logic ;  by  Parker, 
in  the  grasp  of  facts,  and  in  merciless  sarcasm  ;  by 
Sumner,  in  copiousness  of  illustration ;  by  Douglass,  in 
humor  and  in  pathos :  but,  after  all,  in  the  perfect 
moulding  of  the  orator,  he  surpassed  not  merely  each 
of  these,  but  all  of  them  combined.  What  the  Revolu- 
tionary orators  would  now  seem  to  us,  we  cannot  tell: 
but  it  is  pretty  certain,  that  of  all  our  post-Revolution- 
ary speakers,  save  Webster  only,  Wendell  Phillips  stood 
at  the  head ;  while  he  and  Webster  represented  types 
of  oratory  so  essentially  different  that  any  comparison 
between  them  is  like  trying  to  compare  an  oak-tree  and 
a  pine. 

He  was  not  moody  or  variable,  or  did  not  seem  so : 
yet  he  always  approached  the  hour  of  speaking  with 
a  certain  reluctance,  and  never  could  quite  sympathize 
with  the  desire  to  listen  either  to  him  or  to  any  one  else. 
As  he  walked  toward  the  lecture-room  he  would  say  to 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS.  Xlll 

a  friend,  "  Why  do  people  go  to  lectures  ?  There  is  a 
respectable  man  and  woman ;  they  must  have  a  good 
home :  why  do  they  leave  it  for  the  sake  of  hearing 
somebody  talk?"  This  was  not  affectation,  but  the 
fatigue  of  playing  too  long  on  one  string.  Just  before 
coming  on  the  platform  at  a  convention,  he  would 
remark  with  absolute  sincerity,  "  I  have  absolutely 
nothing  to  say ; "  and  then  would  go  on  to  make,  es- 
pecially if  hissed  or  interrupted,  one  of  his  very  best 
speeches.  Nothing  spurred  him  like  opposition  ;  and  it 
was  not  an  unknown  thing  for  one  of  his  young  admir- 
ers to  take  a  back  seat  in  the  hall,  in  order  to  stimulate 
him  by  a  counterfeited  hiss  if  the  meeting  seemed  tame. 
Then  the  unsuspecting  orator  would  rouse  himself  like 
a  lion.  When  this  opposition  came  not  from  friends 
but  foes,  it  was  peculiarly  beneficial ;  and  perhaps  the 
greatest  oratorical  triumph  he  ever  accomplished  was 
on  that  occasion  in  Faneuil  Hall  (Jan.  30,  1852),  when 
it  was  re-opened  to  the  abolitionists  after  the  capture 
of  the  slave  Thomas  Sims.  Mr.  Webster's  friends  were 
there  in  force,  and  drowned  Mr.  Phillips's  voice  by  re- 
peated cheers  for  their  favorite ;  when  Mr.  Phillips  so 
turned  the  laugh  against  them  each  time,  in  the  inter- 
vals when  they  paused  for  breath,  that  their  cheers 
grew  fainter  and  fainter,  and  he  had  at  last  mobbed  I 
the  mob. 

He  used  to  deny  having  trained  himself  for  a  public 
speaker ;  drew  habitually  from  but  few  books,  Tocque- 
ville's  "  Democracy  in  America  "  being  among  the  chief    » 
of  these;  but  read  newspapers  enormously,  and  maga-    j~ 
zines  a  good  deal,  while  lie  had  the  memory  of  an  orator 
or  a  literary  man,  never  letting  pass  an  effective  anec- 
dote or  a  telling  fact.     These  he  turned  to  infinite  ac- 
count, never  sparing  ammunition,  and  never  fearing  to     - — 
repeat  himself.     He  used  to  say  that  he  knew  but  one 


XIV  WENDELL   PHILLIPS. 

thing  thoroughly,  —  the  history  of  the  English  Revolu- 
tion, —  and  from  this  he  obtained  morals  whenever  he 
wanted  them ;  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  used  them  in  almost 
any  direction.  He  knew  the  history  of  the  American 
Revolution  also,  Sam  Adams  being  his  favorite  hero. 
He  was  a  thorough  Bostonian  too,  and  his  anti-slavery 
enthusiasm  never  rose  quite  so  high  as  when  blended 
with  local  patriotism.  No  one  who  heard  it  can  ever 
forget  the  thrilling  modulation  of  his  voice  when  he 
said,  at  some  special  crisis  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation, 
I  "I  love  inexpressibly  thfe  stijets  of  Boston,  over  whose 
/  pavements  my  mother  held  up  tenderly  my  baby  feet ; 
\  and,  if  God  grants  me  time  enough,  I  will  make  them 
1  too  pure  to  bear  the  footsteps  of  a  slave."  At  the  very 
"outset  he  doubtless  sometimes  prepared  his  speeches 
with  care ;  but  his  first  great  success  was  won  off-hand, 
and  afterward,  during  that  period  of  incessant  practice, 
which  Emerson  makes  the  secret  of  his  power,  he  relied 
generally  upon  his  vast  accumulated  store  of  facts  and 
illustrations,  and  his  tried  habit  of  thinking  on  his  legs. 
•jOn  special  occasions  he  would  still  make  preparation, 
'and  sometimes,  though  rarely,  wrote  out  his  speeches 
beforehand.  No  one  could  possibly  recognize  this,  how- 
.ever.  He  never  seemed  more  at  his  ease,  more  collo- 
quial, more  thoroughly  extemporaneous,  than  in  his  ad- 
dress before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa. Society  at  Cambridge  : 
yet  it  had  all  been  sent  to  the  Boston  daily  papers  in 
advance,  and  appeared  with  scarcely  a  word's  variation, 
except  where  he  had  been  compelled  to  omit  some  pas- 
sages for  want  of  time.  That  was,  in  some  respects,  the 
most  remarkable  effort  of  his  life  :  it  was  a  tardy  recog- 
nition of  him  by  his  own  college  and  his  own  literary 
society ;  and  he  held  an  unwilling  audience  spell-bound, 
while  bating  absolutely  nothing  of  his  radicalism.  Many 
a  respectable  lawyer  or  divine  felt  his  blood  run  cold, 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS.  XV 

the  next  day,  when  he  found  that  the  fascinating  orator 
whom  he  had  applauded  to  the  echo  had  really  made 
the  assassination  of  an  emperor  seem  as  trivial  as  the 
doom  of  a  mosquito. 

He  occupied  during  most  of  his  life  the  willing  posi- 
tion of  a  tribune  of  the  people  ;  nor  was  there  any  social    \ 
class  with  which  he  was  unwilling  to  be,  logically  and 
politically  at  least,  identified.      Emerson,  while    thor- 
oughly true  to  the  anti-slavergpno^ment,  always  con- 
fessed to  feeling  a  slight  instinctive  aversion  to  negroes ; 
Theodore  Parker  uttered  frankly  his  dislike  of  the  Irish. 
Yet  neither  of  these  had  distinctly  aristocratic  impulses, 
while  Phillips  had.     His  conscience  set  them  aside  so 
imperatively,  that   he  himself  hardly  knew  that   they 
were  there.     He  was  always  ready  to  be  identified  with 
the  colored  people;  always  ready  to  give  his  oft-repeated 
lecture  on  O'Connell,  to  the  fellow-countrymen  of  that 
hero:  but  in  these  and  all  cases  his  democratic  habit 
had  the  good-natured  air  of  some  kindly  young  prince  ; 
he  never  was  quite  the  equal  associate  that  he  seemed. 
The  want  of  it  never  was  felt  by  his  associates :  it  was 
in  his  dealing  with  antagonists,  that  the  real  attitude 
came  out.      When  he   once  spoke  contemptuously  of 
those  who  dined  with  a  certain  Boston  club  which  had 
censured  him,  as  "men  of  no  family,"  the  real  mental 
habit  appeared.     And  in  his  external  aspect  and  betir-   j 
ing  the  patrician  air  never  quite  left  him,  —  the   air  j 
that  he  had  in  college  days,  or  in  that   period  when,   * 
as  Edmund  Quincy  delighted  to  tell,  an  English  visitor 
pointed  out  to  George  Ticknor  two  men  walking  down 
Park  Street,  and  added  the   cheerful   remark,   "They 
are   the   only  men  I   have  seen  in  your  country  who 
looked  like  gentlemen."     The  two  men  were  the  aboli- 
tionists Quincy  and  Phillips,  in  whose  personal  aspect 
the  conservative  Ticknor  could  see  little  to  commend. 


xvi  WENDELL  PHILLIPS. 

There  is  no  fame  so  intoxicating  or  so  transient  as 
that  of  mere  oratory.     Some  of  the  most  accomplished 
public  speakers  whom  America  has  produced  have  died 
within  a  few  years,  in  mid-career,  and  left  scarcely  a 
ripple  on  the  surface.     Two  of  these,  to  name  no  others, 
were  Ex-Governor  Bullock  of  Massachusetts,  and  Pro- 
fessor Diraan  of  Rhode  Island.     Neither  of  them  had 
the  fortune  to  be  identified  with  any  great  moral  enter- 
prise, or  to  stand  befoi#the  public  for  a  long  time,  and 
be  the  mouthpiece  of  its  indignation  or  its  demands. 
It  was  not  chance  that  gave  this  position  to  Wendell 
Phillips:  a  great  many  elements  of  genius, studies, social 
prestige,  and  moral  self-sacrifice,  had  to  be  combined  to 
produce  it.     It  never  turned  his  head :  his  aims  were 
too  high  for  that;  and  he  was  aided  by  the  happy  law 
of  compensation,  which  is  apt  to  make  men  indifferent 
to  easily-won  laurels.     There  is  no  doubt,  that,  in  the 
height  of  his  fame  as  a  lecturer  or  platform-speaker,  he 
often  chafed  under  the  routine  and  the  fatigue;   and 
felt,  that,  had  not  fate  or  Providence  betrayed  him,  his 
career  would  have  been  very  different.     He  knew,  that 
coming  forward  into  life  with  his  powers,  and  at  the 
time  he  did,  he  might  probably  have  won  the  positions 
which  went   easily  to   men  less   richly  endowed,  —  as 
Abbott  Lawrence  and  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  — and  that, 
had  he  been  once  within  the  magic  circle  of  public  office, 
he  could  have  used  it  for  noble  ends,  like  his  favorite, 
Sir  Samuel  Romilly.     "What  I  should  have  liked,"  he 
said  once  to  a  friend,  "would  have  been  the  post  of. 
United-States  senator  for  Massachusetts;"  and,  though  | 
he  never  even  dreamed  of  this  as  possible  for  himself,  he 
saw  his  friend  Sumner  achieve  a  position  which  he,  could 
he  once  have  accepted  its  limitations,  might  equally  have 
adorned. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  how  public  office  might  have 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS.  XV11 

affected  him;  whether  it  would  have  given  him  just 
that  added  amount  of  reasonableness  and  good  judg- 
ment which  in  later  years  seemed  often  wanting,  or 
whether  it  would  have  only  betrayed  him  to  new  dan- 
gers. He  never  had  it,  and  the  perilous  lifelong  habits 
of  the  platform  told  upon  him.  The  platform-speaker 
has  his  especial  dangers,  as  conspicuously  as  the  lawyer 
or  the  clergyman  ;  he  acquires  insensibly  the  mood  of 
a  gladiator,  and,  the  better  his  fencing,  the  more  he  be- 
comes the  slave  of  his  own  talent.  Les  hommes  exerces 
a  Vescrime  out  beau  vouloir  manager  leur  adversaire,  Vhahi- 
tude  est  plus  fort,  Us  ripostent  malgre  euz.  As  under  this 
law  the  Vicomte  de  Camors  seduced,  almost  against  his 
will,  the  wife  of  the  comrade  to  whom  he  had  pledged 
his  life,  so  Wendell  Phillips,  once  with  rapier  in  hand, 
insensibly  fought  to  win  as  well  as  for  the  glory  of  God. 
The  position  once  taken  must  be  maintained,  —  the 
opponent  must  be  overwhelmed  by  almost  an}'  means. 
No  advocate  in  any  court  was  quicker  than  he  to  shift 
his  ground,  to  introduce  a  new  shade  of  meaning,  to 
abandon  an  obvious  interpretation  and  insist  on  a  more 
subtle  onet  Every  man  makes  mistakes  ;  but  you  might 
almost  count  upon  your  ten  fingers  the  number  of  times 
that  Wendell  Phillips,  during  his  whole  lifetime,  owned 
himself  to  be  in  the  wrong,  or  made  a  concession  to  an 
adversary.  In  criticising  his  career  in  this  respect,  we 
may  almost  reverse  the  celebrated  censure  passed  on 
the  charge  of  the  Six  Hundred,  and  may  say  that  it 
was  not  heroic,  but  it  was  war. 

If  this  was  the  case  during  the  great  contest  with 
slavery,  the  evil  was  more  serious  after  slavery  fell. 
The  civil  war  gave  to  Phillips,  as  it  gave  to  many  men, 
an  opportunity ;  but  it  was  not,  in  his  case,  a  complete 
opportunity.  At  first  he  was  disposed  to '  welcome 
secession,  as  fulfilling  the  wishes  of  years ;  "  to  "  build," 


XVlii  WENDELL  PHILLIPS. 

as  he  said,  "  a  bridge  of  gold  for  the  Southern  States 
to  walk  over  in  leaving  the  Union."  This  mood' 
passed ;  and  he  accepted  the  situation,  aiding  the  de- 
parting regiments  with  voice  and  purse.  Yet  it  was 
long  before  the  war  took  a  genuinely  anti-slavery  char- 
acter, "and  younger  men  than  he  were  holding  aloof 
from  it  for  that  reason.  He  distrusted  Lincoln  for  his 
deliberation,  and  believed  in  Fremont ;  in  short,  for  a 
variety  of  reasons,  took  no  clear  and  unmistakable  at- 
titude. After  the  war  had  overthrown  slavery,  the 
case  was  even  worse.  It  was  a  study  of  character  to 
note  the  differing  demeanors  of  the  great  abolition- 
ist leaders  after  that  event.  Edmund  Quincy  found 
himself  wholly  out  of  harness,  dSsceuvrS :  there  was  no 
other  battle  worth  fighting.  He  simply  reverted,  for 
the  rest  of  his  life,  to  that  career  of  cultivated  leisure 
from  which  the  anti-slavery  movement  had  wrenched 
him  for  forty  years;  he  was  a  critic  of  music,  a  fre- 
quenter of  the  theatres.  Garrison,  on  the  other  hand, 
with  his  usual  serene  and  unabated  vigor,  went  on  con- 
tending for  the  rights  of  the  freedmen  and  of  women, 
as,  before,  for  those  of  the  slaves.  Unlike  either  of 
these,  Wendell  Phillips  manifested  for  the  remainder 
of  his  life  a  certain  restlessness ;  always  seemed  to  be 
crying,  like  Shakspeare's  Hotspur,  "  Fye  upon  this  idle 
life ! "  and  to  be  always  seeking  for  some  new  tourna- 
ment. This  would  not  perhaps  have  been  an  evil,  had 
he  not  carried  with  him  into  each  new  enterprise  the 
habits  of  the  platform,  and  of  the  anti-slavery  platform 
in  particular.  There  never  was  a  great  moral  move- 
ment so  logically  simple  as  the  anti-slavery  reform: 
once  grant  that  man  could  not  rightfully  hold  property 
in  man,  and  the  intellectual  part  of  the  debate  was  set- 
tled ;  only  the  moral  appeal  remained,  and  there  Wen- 
dell Phillips  was  master,  and  could  speak  as  one  having 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS.  XIX 

authority.  Slavery  gone,  the  temperance  and  woman- 
suffrage  agitations  remained  for  him  as  before.  But  he 
also  found  himself  thrown,  by  his  own  lifelong  habit, 
into  a  series  of  new  reforms,  where  the  questions  in- 
volved were  wholly  different  from  those  of  the  anti- 
slavery  movement,  and  were  indeed  at  a  different  stage 
of  development.  You  could  not  settle  the  relations  of 
capital  and  labor  off-hand,  by  saying,  as  in  the  case  of 
slavery,  "  Let  my  people  go  :  "  the  matter  was  far  more 
complex.  It  was  like  trying  to  adjust  a  chronometer 
with  no  other  knowledge  than  that  won  by  observing 
a  sun-dial.  In  dealing  with  questions  of  currency,  it 
was  still  worse.  And  yet  Wendell  Phillips  went  on, 
for  the  remainder  of  his  life,  preaching  crusades  on 
these  difficult  problems,  which  he  gave  no  sign  of  ever 
having  seriously  studied ;/  and  appealing  to  sympathy 
and  passion  as  ardently  as  if  he  still  had  three  million 
slaves  for  whom  to  plead. 

It  was  worse  still,  when,  with  the  natural  habit  of  a 
reformer,  he  found  himself  readily  accepting  the  com- 
panionship into  which  these  new  causes  brought  him. 
The  tone  of  the  anti-slavery  apostles  was  exceedingly 
high,  but  there  were  exceptions  even  there.  "  He  is  a 
great  scoundrel,"  said  Theodore  Parker  of  a  certain 
blatant  orator  in  Boston,  "but  he  loves  liberty."  Tt 
was  true,  and  was  fairly  to  be  taken  into  account.  You 
do  not  demand  a  Sunday-school  certificate  from  the  man 
who  is  rescuing  your  child  from  a  burning  house.  But 
it  is  to  be  said,  beyond  this,  that,  though  the  demagogue 
and  the  true  reformer  are  at  opposite  extremes,  they 
have  certain  points  in  common.  Society  is  apt  to  make 
them  both  for  a  time  outcasts,  and  outcasts  fraternize. 
They  alike  distrust  the  staid  and  conventional  class,  and 
they  are  distrusted  by  it.  When  a  man  once  falls  into 
the  habit  of  measuring  merit  by  martyrdoms,  he  dis- 


XX  WENDELL   PHILLIPS. 

criminates  less  closely  than  before,  and  the  best-abused 
man,  whatever  the  ground  of  abuse,  seems  nearest  to 
sainthood.  Mr.  Phillips,  at  his  best,  had  not  always 
shown  keen  discrimination  as  a  judge  of  character;  and 
the  fact  that  the  Boston  newspapers  thought  ill  of 
General  Butler,  for  instance,  was  to  him  a  strong  point 
in  that  gentleman's  favor.  In  this  he  showed  himself 
less  able  to  discriminate  than  his  old  associate  Stephen 
Foster,  one  of  the  most  heroic  and  frequently  mobbed 
figures  in  anti-slavery  history ;  for  Stephen  Foster  sat 
with  reluctance  to  see  Caleb  Cushing  rudely  silenced  in 
Faneuil  Hall  by  his  own  soldiers,  after  the  Mexican 
war;  and  lamented  that  so  good  a  mob,  which  might 
have  helped  the  triumph  of  some  great  cause,  should  be 
wasted  on  one  whom  he  thought  so  worthless  a  creature. 
Fortunate  it  would  have  been  for  Wendell  Phillips  if  he 
had  gone  no  farther  than  this ;  but  he  insisted  on  argu- 
ing from  the  mob  to  the  man,  forgetting  that  people  may 
be  censured  as  well  for  their  sins  as  for  their  virtues. 
The  last  years  of  his  life  thus  placed  him  in  close  co- 
operation with  one  whose  real  motives  and  methods 
were  totally  unlike  his  own,  —  indeed,  the  most  unscru- 
pulous soldier  of  fortune  who  ever  posed  as  a  Friend  of 
the  People  on  this  side  the  Atlantic. 

But  all  these  last  days,  and  the  increasing  irritability 
with  which  he  impulsively  took  up  questions  to  which 
he  could  contribute  little  beyond  courage  and  vehe- 
mence, will  be  at  least  temporarily  forgotten  now  that 
he  is  gone.  They  will  disappear  from  memory  like  the 
selfishness  of  Hancock,  or  the  vanity  of  John  Adams, 
in  the  light  of  a  devoted,  generous,  and  courageous 
career.  With  all  his  faults,  his  inconsistencies,  his  im- 
petuous words,  and  his  unreasoning  prejudices,  Wendell 
Phillips  belonged  to  the  heroic  type.  Whether  we 
regard  him  mainly  as  an  orator,  or  as  a  participant  in 


WENDELL   PHILLIPS.  XXI 

important  events,  it  is  certain  that  no  history  of  the 
United  States  will  ever  be  likely  to  omit  him.  It  is 
rarely  that  any  great  moral  agitation  bequeaths  to  pos- 
terity more  than  two  or  three  names:  the  English  slave- 
trade  abolition  has  left  only  Clarkson  and  Wilberforce 
in  memory;  the  great  Corn  Law  contest,  only  Cobden 
and  Bright.  The  American  anti-slavery  movement  will 
probably  embalm  the  names  of  Garrison,  Phillips,  and 
John  Brown.  This  is  for  the  future  to  decide.  Mean- 
while, it  is  certain  that  Wendell  Phillips  had,  during 
life,  that  quality  which  Emerson  thought  the  highest 
of  all  qualities,  —  of  being  "something  that  cannot  be 
skipped  or  undermined."  Now  that  he  is  gone,  even 
those  who  most  criticised  him  will  instinctively  feel 
that  one  great  chapter  of  American  history  is  closed. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recalL 


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AUQ**1  1989 


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(F2336sl0)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


